To the Climate Vulnerable Nations, The Danger is Not in Doubt

My fellow Thinking Blogger Greenfyre argues with climate change deniers who would like to pretend that climate change is a political issue and not any kind of reality. But for climate vulnerable nations like The Maldives, there is no doubt about the dangers that are immanent. Whole populations will disappear if we don’t do something. Here’s a video of their President Nasheed making a moving speech appealing to the leaders of fellow vulnerable nations at the recent Climate Vulnerable Forum to act to make carbon neutrality a reality as soon as possible.

As he points out, approaching the issue as we are, each nation clinging to their “right” to high carbon emissions, is like signing a global suicide pact.

Please show your support. Go here to 350.org to sign the Climate Survival Pact in solidarity with President Nasheed and the rest of the climate vulnerable nations. And then do whatever you can in your own life, from the choices you make as a consumer to writing your representatives, letters to the editor, etc., to urge your leaders to do what they must in Copenhagen.

Amazing Lifeform

Here’s yet another example of how fricking cool life is: deep sea worms that distract their predators by discharging glowing balls they evolved from gills.

It is also, as a new discovery, an example of how little we know. We’re altering the chemistry that supports life on this amazing planet, and we don’t even know all the species we share it with.

Sam Harris on the Importance of Breaking Religion’s Spell

Here’s an excellent bit from the question and answer period after a debate with Rabbi Wolpe. I’ve been watching a lot of Mr. Harris on YouTube, and I have to say that I like him even more than Richard Dawkins. Don’t get me wrong, I love Dawkins, but, as an American, Harris is more aware of the need to speak with the religious politely and without snarkiness. Dawkins can come off a bit smug, which is a mistake when dealing with the American religious, who already feel beset and belittled, and whose defense mechanisms thereby fly up as soon as the subject is broached with any sort of superior attitude.

Here’s another bit: Sam Harris at the TruthDig conference, talking about how beliefs have consequences, and why the taboo on not examining religious beliefs needs to be lifted.

Here he is talking about the relative morality of various books of the Bible and what would happen if as a society we actually followed it.

And one more, at the Idea Festival in Aspen, where he disputes a lot of common misconceptions about atheism:

If you’d like to hear more of what he has to say, here’s the link to his website, which includes links to a number of articles and videos (including the full debate with Rabbi Wolpe). His thinking is even more in line with my own than Richard Dawkins’s. Dawkins and the rest of the recent crop of atheistic authors turn their backs on mystical experience, whereas Sam Harris, while approaching it as a skeptic, acknowledges that there’s something there to examine that could prove worthwhile, perhaps yielding up that which religions seek but never truly find, tied up as they are in their supernatural superstitions and dogmatism. He’s experienced contemplative states and acknowledges that they can lead to an increase in the ability to experience empathy and compassion, which are clearly in short supply these days.

A neurobiologist, he was motivated to start writing by the events of 9/11, and his focus is on the affect of beliefs on behaviors. Some people have painted him as some sort of warmonger Islamophobe, but that’s hardly the case when you read the suspect passages in context. Does he say that people holding the beliefs indoctrinated by Islam can be led therewith to bad behavior? Absolutely, but that’s hardly the same thing.

Mamas For Obama!

Here are two great ads created by the the group Mamas for Obama. They lifted my spirits enough to want to share them with you. In the first, Family Values, we’re reminded that though the Republicans pretend to have a monopoly on concern for family values, their policies are actually pretty destructive to families. In the second, A President to Be Proud Of, the lady could so have been me. I’ve felt exactly the same way.

The Republicans really do need a time out. I hope they use it to think deeply about what they’ve done.

Shocker: I love Hollywood

I never thought I’d say this, but right now, I love Hollywood. Check out this celebrity-studded ad beautifully using reverse psychology. Don’t vote! (Warning…this is for adults — who’re the only one’s who CAN vote — and uses some adult language.)

PUMA Needs to Get It’s Collective Head Out of Its Arse

Some of the commentaries on this youtube video are really disturbing. Apparently McCain’s shallow attempt to appeal to disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters is working. I’m so depressed! Are some women so stupid that they think anyone with a vagina is the same as any other? Ms. Palin is a theocrat of the worst kind: against reproductive rights, opposed to abortion even in cases of rape and incest; for banning same-sex marriage with a constitutional amendment; and for teaching creationism in schools in blatant violation of the anti-establishment clause of the first amendment to our constitution. (Don’t get me started on her willingness to abuse power or her environmental record.) Apparently she not only doesn’t know much about anything to do with national government, she doesn’t know much about what our founders intended our government to do.

I’m not crazy about Barrack Obama or Joe Biden, but they beat the heck out of an idiot who graduated near the bottom of his class and whose claim to heroism starts and ends with getting shot down and surviving torture and a beauty-pageant contestant who seems to care more about producing children than raising them.

These PUMA (here’s the wikipedia article on this PAC) fools need to remember what Sen. Clinton stands for, and it’s not a woman in office by any means necessary! It matters WHICH woman, and most importantly, a woman who thinks rather than bending over for big business or following the Bible instead of the Constitution.

Bayer Ranks High in the List of Evil Corporations

If you’re concerned about a shadowy group of Europeans pulling our political strings and ruining good people’s lives (what some like to call the Illuminati, though anyone with sense has to see that these folk are not enlightened in the least), check out the Wikipedia article on Bayer AG.

Here are some interesting snippets:

As part of the reparations after World War I, Bayer had its assets, including rights to its name and trademarks, confiscated in the United States, Canada, and several other countries. In the United States and Canada, Bayer’s assets and trademarks were acquired by Sterling Drug, a predecessor of Sterling Winthrop.

Bayer became part of IG Farben, a conglomerate of German chemical industries which formed the financial core of the Nazi regime. IG Farben owned 42.5% of the company that manufactured Zyklon B, a chemical used in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. When the Allies split IG Farben after World War II for involvement in several Nazi war crimes, Bayer reappeared as an individual business. Bayer executive Fritzter Meer, sentenced to seven years in prison by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, was made head of the supervisory board of Bayer in 1956, after his release.

Isn’t that great? I’m thinking of writing a short story based on the transactions…imagine, businessmen making a deal over boxes of poison gas. “Thanks for doing your part for the Final Solution, Fritz. And here’s a bag of money for it, to boot.”

Bayer AG is involved in an ongoing controversy with French and Nova Scotian beekeepers over claimed pesticide kills of honeybees from its seed treatment insecticide imidacloprid. France has since issued a provisional ban on the use of Imidacloprid for corn seed treatment pending further action. A consortium of U.S. beekeepers has also filed a civil suit against Bayer CropScience for alleged losses.

I’m wondering if this could explain the problems bee keepers in America have been having with the as-yet unexplained hive collapse syndrome which is threatening our food supply.

Austrian journalist Klaus Werner alleged in his Black Book on Brand Companies, that the Bayer subsidiary H.C. Starck financed the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo by trading illegally with the mineral coltan. The allegations were also confirmed by a U.N. panel of experts. Bayer alleged that since 2001 it didn’t trade any more with congolese coltan, but never proved where their resources came from.

How much these people care about human lives: zero. Which would explain the following:

In October 2001, Bayer was taken to court after 24 children in the remote Andean village of Tauccamarca were killed and 18 more severely poisoned when they drank a powdered milk substitute that had been contaminated with methyl parathion.

The white powder that resembles powdered milk and has no strong chemical odour was packaged in small plastic bags that provide no protection to users and give no indication of the danger of the product within. The bags were labelled in Spanish only, and carried drawings of healthy carrots and potatoes but no pictograms indicating danger or toxicity.

Let’s worry about reality, folks, not science-fiction human-reptilian hybrids. There are evil homo sapiens on this planet. No extraterrestrial DNA needed.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti is My Kind of Poet

An anarchist. I just listened to his “Greedy Blues” at Rhapsody, from the album *Mob Action Against the State.* He also gives a nice diatribe beforehand, about global capitalism and monoculture. I don’t have time to listen to the rest of the album yet, but I think I’ll have to.

He’s one of those rare poets, like me, who takes his responsibility as an artist seriously.

Because the Earth Needs a Good Lawyer

That’s the motto of this group I get action alerts from in my email, called Earthjustice. Check them out, and please support them with some money if you’ve got some to spare and care about this sort of thing. (Sign up for their mailing list, and you can join me in badgering our congressfolk, too, into representing us instead of big business.)

Global Warming’s Hitting Home for those in the Far North

Here’s an article for all those neocon dolts who insist that global warming is some sort of liberal conspiracy to make Bush look bad (or whatever ridiculous belief causes their resistance to the truth). It’s about Inuit hunters and other indigenous folks of the far north (and the wildlife they coexist with) having trouble with the thinning ice.

QALUIT, Nunavut – Inuit hunters are falling through thinning ice and dying. Dolphins are being spotted for the first time. There’s not enough snow to build igloos for shelter during hunts.

As scientists work to establish the impact of global warming, explorers and hunters slogging across northern Canada and the Arctic ice cap on sled and foot are describing the realities they see on the ground. Three of them recently spoke to The Associated Press.

“This is really ground zero for global warming,” said Will Steger, a 62-year-old Minnesotan who has been traveling the region for 43 years and has witnessed the impact of warming on the 155,000 indigenous people of the Arctic.

“This is where a culture has lived for 5,000 years, relying on a very delicate, interconnected ecosystem and, one by one, small pegs of that ecosystem are being pulled out.”

Read more.

It’s time to get serious about ameliorating our impact. Go here and sign a petition to encourage caps on emissions. Let’s reclaim our planet for all its inhabitants.